Scorpio by Marko Kloos

Author:Marko Kloos [Kloos, Marko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

There’s no graveyard in the Vault. When the soldiers carry off the tray with the six burial capsules, she knows they will place them in storage down in the military section by the main airlock. Back before the Lankies, the capsules would get repatriated, carried back to Earth by the next supply ship to make orbit. Without the supply flights from Earth, Alex guesses that the capsules of their dead will be in storage for a long time, to be discovered by someone else long after everyone in the Vault is gone.

Then the soldiers and their somber cargo are gone, the colonists have started to disperse, and the funeral is over. Alex watches someone take down the rack for the funeral tray and carry it off.

I almost ended up on that thing myself, she thinks. Or rather, just a capsule with my name on it. They’d be carrying it off to storage right now with the others.

“You all right?” someone says behind her. She turns to see Private Lopez in his dress uniform, his white cap under his arm.

“No,” she replies. “Not yet. It’ll be a while, I think.”

“I know what you mean.”

“We worked so hard to keep him alive,” Alex says. “And then he died anyway.”

“He died here. Among friends. Not alone in the back of a mule somewhere out on the ridge. I don’t have any regrets.”

She’s not entirely sure that she feels the same way, but it’s an unpleasant thought, so she changes the subject.

“How’s the mule? Are they going to be able to fix it?”

Lopez shakes his head. “The power core is trashed. We don’t have a spare one around. Could have maybe rigged something with those cells we got from the outpost. But that’s not an option anymore.”

“So they towed it back for nothing,” Alex says.

“It’s going to be a spare-parts bin. And we can swap the cannon mount to the other mule, transfer the tri-barrel to the crawler.”

“I don’t think I am ready to go out there again, Lopez.”

The private shakes his head lightly.

“Neither am I,” he says. “Not yet. But we’ll do it again. And when we do, we’ll want to have you along. You and the dog.”

She knows he’s probably saying that just to lift her spirits, but she gives him a little smile in response, and he smiles back.

“Take a time-out. It’ll be a while before we go out again. Just don’t keep telling yourself this was all for nothing. Sometimes you get a shit hand. Doesn’t mean you let them have the table. You reshuffle the deck and go again. All right?”

“All right,” she says, even though she doesn’t share any of that sentiment right now. But whether he really feels it or he’s just trying to lift her spirits, she finds that his pep talk does give her a little bit of solace.

He takes the cap out from underneath his arm and puts it on his head.

“All right. I gotta get out of my dress blues and go back to work.

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